Although most people are familiar with the game of lawn tennis, few realise that its roots go back a long way. In 1874 the newly-created game of lawn tennis adopted the scoring of the much older game, now known as real tennis. Real tennis itself is one of a number of games which share the same system of scoring and have similar rules. Scoring in fifteens and playing chases are such unusual and singular methods of scoring that it seems reasonable to assume that all games sharing these features have a common origin.